Sami Kimberley, UK
@samikimberley
www.samikimberley.com
WASTELAND is a design-led framework that facilitates multi-perspective collaboration across disciplines in response to complex place-based ecological and social challenges. Through guided creative interventions, ecologists, designers and stewards of place can build shared foundations and shape pluralistic and regenerative projects.
Both metaphor and method, WASTELAND is both a place of relative neutrality and possibility, as well as a response to the inevitability of contrasting perspectives in multi-stakeholder projects. At its core, it believes that inter-disciplinary, cross-cultural and multi-species collaboration is essential for regenerative outcomes in an interconnected world.
Developed at Kilchoan Melfort Trust, the project was inspired by the perception of ‘waste’ land and ‘wasted’ land in the context of the Scottish Highlands. For example, one perspective views ecological restoration sites as wasted land, unable to yield income and support communities economically, while the other sees degraded fields of monoculture crops as ecological wastelands and lost habitats.
WASTELAND provides a framework where differing perspectives are of equal value, and their contention is seen as a virtue to strengthen designed solutions. Through the process, predetermined and responsive creative methodologies facilitate alignment, enlightenment and equity, acting as a guardian of collaboration to encourage iterative design and development.